Military Health IT Modernization: What Lies Ahead – Part 2

By Toné Mason, DOD Senior Analyst

As I discussed in my blog last month, health technology and health services continue to represent a significant part of DOD spending, requiring acquisition planning to keep pace. With limited funding and enterprise contracts essentially status quo through 2020, agency executives are encouraging vendors to prepare now for 2021.

At the recent 2019 Defense Health Information Technology Symposium, Tom McCaffery, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs noted that the Military Health System (MHS) is a $50+ billion per year military medical enterprise, with 51 hospitals, 424 medical clinics and 248 dental clinics worldwide. As a health benefits program, it covers 9.5 million lives, almost 800,000 network providers, with over 60% of care purchased from civilian sources. McCaffery estimated that MHS spends $1 of every $10 budgeted to the DoD each year. Read more of this post